KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 20 January
Did you not know?
Epiphany means manifestation, the making known of what is to be known. The teaching of the Epiphany season in the Christian understanding is about two things: the making known of the essential divinity of Christ and the making known of the divine will and purpose for our humanity. In this way it complements an essential feature of the religions of the world and every educational project worthy of the name. There are things to be known that belong to the wholeness and completeness of our humanity as persons. Such is the idea of philosophy, of learning, as a way of life.
We easily lose sight of this in a world which is fixated and focused on a multitude of specific things such that we can no longer see the whole of which we are a part. This is where the Epiphany season comes into play. It challenges our own incomplete and partial perspectives where we constantly mistake a half-truth (or less) for the whole truth or where we think that because there are different perspectives there is no truth. To say that there is ‘my truth’ and ‘your truth’ is to say there is no truth which is self-contradictory. We forget that all our knowing presupposes the idea that there is something to be known that is in principle for all. The idea of Truth is assumed in all our intellectual endeavours.
Owing to the restrictions of the current worries about COVID-19 in its latest iteration, omicron, Chapel has been suspended. Yet in the virtual assembly with the Junior School this week, I had the opportunity to speak briefly to them. I reminded them of the story which we would have read in Chapel this week about Jesus as a boy of twelve, not altogether unlike them, engaged with the doctors of the law, “hearing them and asking them questions”. It is a wonderful story about teaching and learning. It is serious and freeing especially in the face of things which we cannot change. The challenge is not to collapse into our fears and worries but to find ways to persevere and to carry on in the pursuit of truth, the one thing necessary and something which lies within our control and responsibility. It speaks to our freedom and dignity and reminds us of the strong ethical requirement that with knowledge and its pursuit comes responsibility. Such is growing up and maturing in wisdom.